I am no longer worried. Now that I understand there is no energy crisis, no ingenuity crisis, only the need for well-meaning bureaucracies to adapt policies to rapidly changing assumptions, I am terrified.

Worried about the Energy Crisis?

I am no longer worried. Now
that I understand there is no energy crisis, no ingenuity crisis, only the
need for well-meaning bureaucracies to adapt policies to rapidly changing
assumptions, I am terrified.

I used to think and worry about the energy crisis and the terrible
consequences we will suffer as our economy crumble and social fabric
shreds in the wake of Peak Oil and Global Warming.

I worried about high gas prices, ratcheting ever higher.

I worried about political instability of the oil supply from the
Middle East as our dependence on Middle East oil rose from 30% to
60%.

I worried about 2 wars in the Middle East in the last 17 years
to protect access to oil.

I worried about Green House Gases and air pollution.

I worried about Abrupt Climate Change and the horrible
consequences of Global Warming.

I worried about Peak Oil and the imminent reality that available
energy is about to peak and remorselessly decline, sucking economic
activity and population carrying capacity into the void.

I was wrong, there is no energy crisis. In this long dark of working
fanatically to find solutions to my worries, I finally broke through the
fog. I was looking for answers and got the problem wrong, twice. Not a
testament to brilliance.

At first I thought there was an energy crisis but Mr. Edison, Mr.
Swenson and 8 years of hard work on JPods corrected me, there is no
energy crisis (I will explain this in a moment). Then I thought there
was an ingenuity crisis, but looking around there is vast amounts of
creativity bursting at the seams trying to find vents to explode into
being.

At a glacial pace, not that slow any more, it finally dawned on me
when someone asked me a question, &quot;Of the 10 worst famines of the 20th
Century, how many happened in Africa?" My answer was 8; the correct
answer is zero. Highly agrarian societies have had severe hardships, but
truly spectacular famines require government policy (extracted from
Reuters ):

China 1958-62 Between 10 and 30 million people died as a result
of Mao Zedong's Great Leap Forward.

Soviet Union 1921-22 Nine million people died.

Soviet Union (Ukraine) 1932-34 Between seven and eight million
people died as a result of Josef Stalin's massive industrialisation
programme.

Northwest China 1927 Between three and six million people died.
The famine was triggered by drought but made worse by local warlords
and harsh taxes.

China (Henan) 1943 Five million people died as a result of a
combination of invasion by Japan and grain seizures by the Chinese
army to feed its troops and finance the war.

North Korea 1995-99 Between 2.8 million and 3.5 million people
died because of a combination of flooding and government policy.

India (Bengal) 1943Between 2.1 and three million people died as
a result of crop failure, the exporting of foods by India's British
administration to Allied soldiers fighting in World War Two.

China (Hunan) 1929 Two million people died because of drought
and conflict.

Soviet Union (Ukraine and Belorussia) 1946-47 Two million died
because of drought and government policy - the re-enforcement of
agricultural collectivisation policies after World War Two. This was
the last famine in the Soviet Union.

Cambodia 1979 Between 1.5 and two million died of famine
following a decade of conflict - first during the civil war from
1970 to 1975, then during the brutal Khmer Rouge era until 1978 and
finally in the aftermath of the Vietnamese invasion that ended Khmer
Rouge rule in 1979.

Wow, and that does not even account for deaths in war and genocide,
which are also direct government policy.

So, life in America is great. What can be wrong with our policy? Why
I am so uppity that I should worry and think wrong-headed all our
governments, all our political parties and each of us for actively or
passively supporting current policies.

That brings me back to the point made earlier, that I would explain
later; there is no energy crisis. The sun delivers to us, directly to
our farms, towns and cities, 178,000 TeraWatts. All of human society
uses 13. There is no energy crisis; we can live within a solar budget.
It is like having a really big allowance. Vast amounts of excess energy
are delivered to us nearly daily for our convenience by the nature and
the grace of the universe in which we live.

Mr. Edison, responsible for substantial inventions, even told us so,
&quot;I'd put my money on the sun and solar energy. What a source of power! I
hope we don't have to wait 'til oil and coal run out before we tackle
that."

It is not a new concept; Thomas Edison lived from1847-1931.

So why are we so neglectful of the resource so kindly delivered to
us? Why do are we so in love with oil, nukes and bio-fuels? Why are our
policies all directed at cars, trains, buses and airplanes? The answer
is pretty simple: they were invented and in use before we build our big
government bureaucracies (New Deal and WWII). It sound pretty stupid but
think a minute, what is a bureaucracy? Bureaucracies implement policies
to create consistency; bureaucracies are the institutionalized
suspension of judgment. Once policies are in place, all subsequent
actions are linear:

OK, so nukes were not
invented before our bureaucracies. But they are one of those rare
inventions that were created by our bureaucracies. So they sort of
fit into the current path of acceptance.

Bio-fuels: we know
how to heat a tent with horse manure, been done along time requires
no new thought. Making it into a liquid just takes 2 pounds of coal
or natural gas to create 3 pounds of liquid fuel. Not very
efficient, lousy food policy but great farm policy. We will likely
have the first SUV Famine within 2 years as corn is diverted from
food, exported from poor countries to be burned in SUV's in America.
I'll pay the high price for non-ethanol gas. I do not want to starve
someone so I can drive my car cheaper, on taxpayer subsidized gas.

Oil: a great
high-density fuel that allowed us to build small but powerful
portable engines. Love it. I do not want, and probably will not give
up my car. Oil is a wonderful gift. But it has been so cheap we
waste it moving a ton to move a person. When we first built cars and
locked in policy, cars barely moved faster than a horse. Waste
products came out as an invisible gas instead of bio-fuels we had to
pick up. It was great. But &quot;the poison is in the dose" we
implemented linear policies of bigger and more wasteful until we
flooded our atmosphere with invisible but active Green House Gases.

How many bureaucrats
file patents? Not many. And since creative, small businesses are so
unruly, abounding in patents and more difficult to manage than large
corporations and monopolies, rules gradually weed them out. The
result is a nice, neat, closed system where only what is in use is
qualified, and only qualified systems can compete. So we end up with
only cars, buses, trains and planes. All the resources of our
government, major corporations and educations institutions are
directed at keeping us on this funded path. The question "How do we
move people to and from work" is not allowed. The only question
funded for research is "How do we get gas in our cars or drive
people to accept waiting for 18th Century trains?" It is perfect,
unless the assumptions change.

Unfortunately, assumptions that abundant, cheap, and securely oil
will always be available, and invisible gases cannot hurt us have proved
wrong. We are propelling ourselves and the world's eco-system into
famine; but we are very orderly about it.

And that brings me all the way back to the beginning about being
wrong twice, there is no energy crisis, there is no ingenuity crisis,
there is a policy crisis.

Our policies require we move a ton to move a person. &quot;Light Rail"
moves 3 tons to move a person; it is like giving everyone a Hummer, they
just don't have to park it. It is no wonder there appears to be an
energy crisis; our policies require us to be 2% efficient. It is no
wonder we have a Global Warming crisis; 98% of the power we use is
vented to it.

Here is a thought from a wise man, &quot;The significant problems we face.
cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we
created them." Albert Einstein

Here is different thinking applied to policy from Herman Scheer of
Germany, make room for small businesses; let anyone be a power company.
Require utilities to buy solar generated power from people at 20% over
their purchase price. Policy has created an explosion of innovation and
ingenuity. Germany, a country of the far north, with long dark winters,
and short rainy summers, has outpaced California in deploying solar
energy solutions. The policy has also created 100,000 new jobs in the
sustainable infrastructure industry.

For
our contribution, we invented JPods. Instead of moving a ton to move a
person, JPods strives to move only the person. They are so efficient
that the integrated solar collectors capture more power than the
transportation network needs. Ribbons of power and mobility turn entire
transportation networks into gigantic solar generators. Hopefully the
policy that prevents deployment will soon change.

And by the way, I am no longer worried. Now that I understand there
is no energy crisis, no ingenuity crisis, only the need for well-meaning
bureaucracies to adapt policies to rapidly changing assumptions, I am
terrified.

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